Chinese records are some of the earliest reliable records
which tells us of early Southeast Asia. In the 3rd century, A.D. when
the Chinese empire was divided into three kingdoms, the Southern
kingdom of Wu sent a mission to Southeast Asia to report on the
political situation there. They wrote of more than a hundred kingdoms
in what they referred to as the 'Southern Seas'. The mission had
important consequences. It encouraged many more Southeast Asian states
to open official relations with China. At first, those who sent
missions to China most frequently were mainly from modern Vietnam,
Cambodia, Thailand and the Malay Peninsula. But later, the kingdoms of
Java and Sumatra noted the profits of the China trade and sent missions
too.

This trade became increasingly important as the Chinese became
more and more ardent in their new Buddhist faith. The famous Buddhist
monk I-Tsing used Chien-Ch'a (Kedah) and Lang-Chia-Shu
(Langkasuka) as stopping points on his pilgrimage to India. Because of
Buddhism, they began to use incense, and the best incense was made from
the aromatic woods found in Southeast Asia. They specially valued some
of the objects of worship to be found in the Buddhist centres of the
region, both in India and Sri Vijaya.

In this way, new links were established and the trade expanded
rapidly. The reunification of China by the Sui and T'ang dynasties in
the 7th century greatly increased this trade - the power and wealth of
the newly reunified China was quickly appreciated in Southeast Asia,
and most of the kingdoms in the area sought to establish official
relations with China. T'ang China was the richest country at that time
and attracted traders from all over the world, both by land and by sea.
By the 10th century, when the T'ang dynasty collapsed, a trading system
evoplved whereby officials at the southern ports welcomed the foreign
trading missions and determined their tributary status, while local
Chinese merchants handled the trade under supervision. In this way,
both imperial and private interests were served and a new era of
trading was opened. China became a very important market for Southeast
Asian goods and the trade brought wealth to the region. As time went
on, the Chinese not only traded in goods to and from China, but also
became some of the middlemen in the trade between different parts of
Southeast Asia. When the Mongols conquered China and founded the Yuan
dynasty, they found the trade necessary for imperial revenue. They even
went so far as to organise an expedition to Java in 1293 to demonstrate
the power of China, sending a fleet of a thousand ships carrying 20,000
men.

China began to have great political influence. This was not in
terms of changing the local forms of government or the ideas of
government. What was significant was the very near presence of China's
power. Although China did not really use this power against Southeast
Asia (except for the Mongol expedition to Java), its potential power
was often a factor in local politics. This was particularly true during
the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty, when Chinese fleets sailed
several times down the South China Sea. These expeditions of the famous
Admiral Cheng Ho just one century before the arrival of the Europeans,
marked the peak of Chinese relations with Southeast Asia. The fleets
demonstrated Chinese power, Cheng Ho intervened in local politics and
the tributary system was reinforced. Even though the expeditions were
abandoned and the policy reversed after 30 years, the impact of China's
power was tremendous.

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